The 50 greatest westerns

Saddle up for Time Out’s in-depth guide to the most rootin’, tootin’ film genre of them all – the western. From golden age classics to hard-hitting revisionist dramas plus a hearty helping of spaghetti, here are 50 films to make you yearn for the days when men were men, women wore bonnets and guns were the only law…

Jesus may have not packed a six-gun, or spent most of his wages being ‘entertained’ in the back rooms of a border town saloon by some chiffon-clad minx called Saucy Sue, but there are mythic, quasi-religious allegories everywhere you look in the western genre.

One person who was clearly aware of this – and took full advantage of it – was Peter Fonda, who was able to direct this chilled-out fable of a hippified west – in which a band of weary travellers choose to re-embrace rustic minimalism – following the success of 1969’s ‘Easy Rider’.

It’s notable mainly for its incandescent, magic-hour photography care of cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond (the skinny-dip opening scene is terrific) and the whispered exchanges between the key cast, Fonda, Warren Oates and Verna Bloom. But proceedings are hampered somewhat by the narcissism of its director-star, who can’t resist top-and-tailing so many scenes with a fashion-shoot-style self-portrait in which he adopts some angular pose and glances pensively into the middle distance like some Laurel Canyon messiah.

It’s an appealing take on the cowboy code of honour, even if it’s not technically ‘great’. DJ

Lonesome Dove (1989)

But, you cry, ‘Lonesome Dove’ is a TV mini-series, not a movie at all! Well, let’s look at the credentials. Adapted from a book widely considered the best ever written in the western genre, a book written by Larry McMurtry, author of ‘The Last Picture Show’ and ‘Terms of Endearment’, and starring not just Duvall in his prime, not just Jones and Glover on the verge of theirs, but a whole host of great movie character actors including Diane Lane, Frederic Forrest, Angelica Huston, Chris Cooper and William Sanderson, this is as cinematic as TV gets.

Sure, it was directed by a guy poised halfway between ‘DARYL’ and ‘Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man’, but we’ll let that slide: in its epic emotional sweep, in its breadth of landscape and action in its depth of character and awareness of history, ‘Lonesome Dove’ is every bit as artistically valid as half the movies on this list – and it’s a damn sight more entertaining than most of ’em. TH

It’s the bullets you remember. Kevin Costner’s terse, unshowy follow up to (and apology for?) ‘Dances with Wolves’ has lovely, soft-spoken dialogue and near-perfect characterisation, gorgeous period recreation and a darkly compelling sense of mounting intensity.

But what really sticks in the mind are the sound effects he used for the final showdown: eschewing the usual polite Hollywood popguns, these weapons feel close, real, rusty and unpredictable.

It’s just one of the many fine, honest, unostentatious touches which pepper this unsung modern western, a film which, for all its apparent lack of ambition and easygoing charm, leaves an unexpectedly deep impression. TH

Less a spaghetti western than a ploughman’s western (honk!), Michael Winterbottom’s wintry morality play relocates Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ from Wessex to the West Coast to startling effect. Wes Bentley – wooden but, for once, quite winning – plays a railroad surveyor newly arrived in Irish immigrant Peter Mullan’s northern Californian fiefdom of Kingdom Come (you can hear the fates conspiring already!) to assess whether the Central Pacific is fit to pass through.

The enormous boon this might generate for Mullan and the town inspires dirty politicking, gut-wrenching revelations, a swooning love story, thunderous shootouts and an impossibly moving climax. Modern sensibilities hold sway throughout, and it’s an undeniably European take, but this is still a fine western in the most classic sense. ALD

‘Oh, give me a home with a low-interest loan, a cowgirl and two pick-up trucks. A colour TV, all the beer should be free. And that, man, is Rancho Deluxe!’ The ’70s produced a gold rush of moseyin’, mournful modern-day westerns such as Paul Newman and Lee Marvin’s broke-ass last cattle drive ‘Pocket Money’ and easy-going Steve McQueen rodeo lament ‘Junior Bonner’ – films in which the cowboy way continued to exist only as a dodge for forgotten men or as a fading carnival sideshow.

The feel was invariably elegiac, yet the film that edges them both off our list, the marvellous ‘Rancho Deluxe’, achieves a tone close to mockery. Scripted by Thomas McGuane – writer of ‘The Missouri Breaks’ and ‘Tom Horn’ – and starring Jeff Bridges and Sam Waterston as a couple of smaller-than-small-time Montana rustlers, it’s a sweet, strange, sad little film that presents the west as a nine-to-five refuge for throwbacks, affected playboys and the outright deluded, all stung by the realisation that the chairs are on the tables.

The last waltz has played itself out and nobody even bothered to dance. ALD

The western ain’t traditionally woman’s work: if the number of oaters featuring women in a starring role can be counted in, at very most, double digits, the number with a female at the helm must be down to the fingers of one hand: in fact (and please correct us if we’re wrong), the only one we can name for sure is Maggie Greenwald’s ‘The Ballad of Little Jo’.

So for Kelly Reichardt to come out swinging with such a confident, uncompromising frontier story – albeit one which upends just about every tradition the genre holds dear – only proves her incredible strength as a filmmaker. True, the film’s implacable pace, ambiguous characterisation and wide-open ending will likely infuriate and horrify western purists – but that is no bad thing. TH

The dictionary defines ‘stark’ as ‘forbidding in its bareness and lack of any ornament, relieving feature or pleasant prospect.’ It’s a description that gets as close as possible to describing accurately André de Toth’s offbeat western set in the Oregon hills.

Whether in regards to the crisp, harsh photography, the series of tense stand-offs that frame the narrative or the punishing final ride into the snowy wastes. Robert Ryan excels as the murderous cattleman come to town to hunt down the pesky varmint who has been fencing off the icy pastures on which his cattle used to chomp.

Instead he finds himself desperately defending the town – with his wits as often as his Winchester – against magnificent bastard Burl Ives and his especially vicious gang of on-the-run desperadoes. Fierce, intelligent, exciting and just about as stark as they come. ALD

It’s in the deep cuts of the Missouri River as it snakes through Montana that we find the soggy-bottomed romance and pantomime sadism of Arthur Penn’s schizophrenic range western.

Rustling is the name of the game but the plot rides pillion to a series of darkly comic existential vignettes in which death and desperation play out an escalating series of uneasy two-handers.

As such, it’s a complex/clever-clever western that doesn’t work for everyone. Does Jack Nicholson’s inalienable urbanity distract from his performance as a raggedy-ass dirt farmer?

Do the ludicrous acting choices afforded Marlon Brando by his star-power detract from the lethality of his character? Does Arthur Penn’s hands-off direction allow the plot eventually to settle into a roundelay of psychic showdowns and pornographic violence? The answers to all are ‘yes’.

But then, the frontier was replete with displaced Easterners, insane poet-warriors and purposeless brutality, so maybe it’s time a film that’s too often dismissed as a top-heavy, blow-dried vanity project is given its dues. ALD

If Sam Peckinpah forced open the floodgates of balletic, consequence-free screen violence with ‘The Wild Bunch’, then it was Robert Aldrich’s gory cavalry western which presented the grim realities of range warfare. Not 20 minutes in, and we’re shown three Apaches playing a game of catch with a dead soldier’s innards. Not much later, an old yokel is punished for defending his patch o’ land by being scalped.

And having his face pulverised. Burt Lancaster keeps the toothy grins in lockdown as MacIntosh, a grizzled tracker with an Apache sidekick who is drafted in to the US cavalry to help put an end to a string of savage attacks undertaken by irate Apache chief, Ulzana.

Its central conceit – that it’s only natural to be driven to extreme violence when witnessing the suffering of friends and countrymen – may feel a little reactionary to contemporary eyes, but it remains a hard-hitting and rugged adventure movie that makes up in charisma and suspense what it lacks in political correctness. DJ

By 1974, the traditional western was sailing so close to self-parody that it would’ve been easy for Mel Brooks to take an old plot, stuff in a few bad puns and call it a day. That he instead turned to Richard Pryor, then on the very edge of superstardom, to help him craft a film which would be not just funny but edgily relevant says a lot about Brooks’s willingness to take risks – once upon a time.

The result may be imperfect. Pryor really should have been allowed to play the lead, and the entire subplot with Madeline Kahn as lisping Teutonic chanteuse Lili von Schtupp is bizarre and inexplicable. But ‘Blazing Saddles’ contains enough glorious one-liners (‘Mongo only pawn in game of life…’), iconic scenes (the campfire, the rogues’ lineup, the set-shattering finale) and sheer genre-busting bravado to carry it through the cactus patches. TH

Comments

i guess another outstanding film they havent mentioned that would definately make my top 5 is a superb western from 1959 starring henry fonda richard widmark and anthony quinn, all western fans know this gem

There are some interesting "honorable mentions" in this list, but your choices for number 1 and 2 wouldn't even make top 10 from any creative or intellectual perspective.

Revisionist Westerns don't mean these guys came up with something out of this world and invented the wheel, it just means they had to try something new after thousands of high quality movies saturated and thoroughly satisfied the classical meaning of the "Western", and among these thousands of worthy competitors, Searchers, The Good, The Bad & The Ugly, High Noon, Unforgiven, and even edge of the genre realistic efforts like There Will Be Blood and The Ox Bow Incident emerge as the real deal, not your cartoonish top 2 picks (The Dead Man and Decision At Sundown are also very weak choices for the top 10) ...

@Deniz A my number 1 pick for sheer impact is a choice of 3, high plains drifter, unforgiven, or the good the bad and the ugly. you get emotion and certain energies from all three, the sense of isolation, danger, bravery, cowardice, heroism, psychology, its all mixed into a western pot and put out there to make out of it what you will......anti heroes or men trying to survive.

HOWEVER I completely agree with you, and thats why VERY CLOSELY I have one of my favourite all time westerns at number 2, John Wayne and Robert Mitchum in ElDorado, its a what you see is what you get, and thats PERFECTLY FINE TOO....its a wonderful portrayal, superbly entertaining film, and it never even made the damn list!!

A "Best of" List of anything without criteria is a Personal List. What we are discussing here..... is a Personal List from at least four people..

My #1 Western is Shane.

It's #1 because I saw it for the first time in 1967 as a young man trying to find his way, creatively, in The Radio Industry. What I saw in Shane were The Subtleties. The Dogs, The Gunshots, The Weather, Shane's relationship with The Woman. So many "little things". Shane was creatively Inspiring.

Before I first saw Shane I had been both a singer and an actor as a child and teenager.....but, as an adult, I wanted to be a producer. What I saw in Shane was what I thought Producers did to take their movie to Another Level. Stuff that most people wouldn't see or hear. At least consciously.

Shane would be one of the theatrical templates I would use to inspire me as a producer in Radio of the earliest documentaries on The Beatles, Elvis Presley and Rock & Roll. Over 100 hours which would be syndicated throughout the world.

In 1980 I took a Sabbatical and drove to Jackson Hole Wyoming where most of Shane had been filmed, spoke to some of the "locals" who had been involved and saw one of the "homesteads" where people had actually been living at the time. I'm sure they thought I was a little weird. But 20 years later, Walt Farmer built a business around Shane. Google Walt. Buy his CD. Before he died, Walt took tourists on tours of Shane locations. Most of them came from Asia.

There are quite a few excellent westerns on this list, and a number that don't belong at all. The placement of the western that is the best film in the genre made to date (in my view), Lonesome Dove, at # 49 and Open Range at #48, is irresponsible at best. The omission of the Best Picture Oscar-winning Dances with Wolves, however, makes the list irrelevant.

Exceptional list. Though "50 greatest Westerns" is probably a bit of a misnomer. If we were exploring a musical genre, I'd call these, by and large, "Deep Cuts." A simple re-naming of this article might have spared you the predictable outrage of your more literal-minded readers.

Greatest I guess means quality crossed with entertainment value. It does for me anyway so if I were to make a list it would contain a bizarre mix of bona fide classics and 'guilty' pleasures that are just great entertainment: Ford's Stagecoach/ The Searchers/The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, more Wayne in the shape of True Grit, The Shootist and Rio Bravo, Other classics such as The Magnificent Seven, High Noon, Once Upon a Time in the West and the Shootist. Modern classics such as Tombstone, 3.10 to Yuma, Unforgiven, The Last of the Mohicans and more up to date westerns such as The Assassination of Jesse James... and Open Range. Some for pure entertainment such as The Quick & The Dead, Pale Rider, The Salvation, Sweetwater and then bang up to date films such as Tarantino's Django Unchained & The Hateful Eight, The Homesman, Slow West and to round out the list the 21st century western No Country for Old Men and Aussie western The Proposition. Maybe not all great but all entertaining.

The problem with Westerns is that the periods when they made the most of them were periods when movies were very strong, and they made tons and tons of movies every year. On the numbers it is hard to avoid the conclusion that there are enough from that seminal period to fuel a list like this, but many of them might be unknown or unloved today. It is fifty years since the 50s when they made over 1000 a year. Inevitably this is mostly a list of revisionist westerns that try to do something new with an old form, but the best should still be in the original form.

The pomposity of the list is not real. They put up 50 westerns, and they match them with the reviews in the time out guide, which are intellectual reviews as opposed to go or don't go reviews, but the reasons in the reviews are not necessarily the kind of reason that gets something on the list. Of course if the reviewer gives detailed reasons as to why a western is the best ever, that would carry here. But if he goes off on some arty tangent, that is probably not why the western is number 36 or 41, it was written outside the list.

what a rubbish list. I have to agree with El D's opinion, if i can elaborate on it, that the selection was founded on pretentious themes that may have been relevant in some past decade. "The Searchers" is clearly the most outstanding western for a host of reasons that include acting, theme, cinematography, characterisation and plot. I've never heard of some of these films and that doesn't make them somehow magically special - it means they're marginal. It would be better to state upfront what criteria is used to judge what film is "good," whether that be popularity, critical appreciation or the enduring quality of the story over time. I was born years after "the man who shot liberty valence," but it resonates in me. And although you might argue that "The Magnificent Seven" was a story lifted from "The Seven Samurai," that alone doesn't lessen the artist value of it. Common! Even the Renaissance masters copied each other. eek!

@Hondo T@emma g Bear in mind that the "better dead than red" them explored in the Searchers is not a prescriptive one. Rather, it offers an illustration of the mentality of the time, the dehumanization of the Native Americans. It's "preposterous" by today's thinking, but certainly not for the time an place in which the story unfolds.

@emma How exactly did you come to understand the films of this list to be "pretentious," other than the fact that you're unfamiliar with them? There's got to be a thousand other lists that cater to a more bourgeois conventional understanding of the Western genre that will support all of your preconceived notions on the subject. AFI will probably be your best bet.

@emma g " pretentious themes that may have been relevant in some past decade"

If you don't like old themes then why the Searchers which has a ridiculous theme of white women should be killed rather than live with native people. Or possibly that the correct treatment for the trauma of rape is murder. I love the whole Searchers vibe but the underlying theme is so preposterous I don't know what to do about it. I can enjoy the less ridiculous scenes because I am not so PC I can't watch something I disagree with, but even at the time it must have seemed silly, which is presumably why Wayne doesn't murder Wood.

this list and the pretentious reviews are completely rubbish....only half of these films deserve to there, and the reasons why aren't because of the pretentious analysis or some deep reason. The reason is they are really good movies that are directed, written, acted, and entertain well and/ or original. The rest is politics and subjective readings.MOst of these films in the list lack originality, and entertainment and character.

What's missing: Treasure of sierra madre, butch cassidy and the sundance kid, tombstone, the proposition, the mercenary, companeros, fistful of dollars, renegade, two mules for sister sara, ride in the whirlwind, major dundee, quick and the dead, (*and if they're including a television show, Deadwood--in the top ten even), duck you sucker, five man army, they call me trinity, pistol for ringo, day of anger, four of the apocalypse, death rides a horse, dances with wolves, django (tarantino), boss nigger trilogy, there will be blood (*if that counts as western...judging by what they call westerns, it would and should count...and be ranked high, if so), jeremiah johnson, 310 to yuma (newer version)

Regarding the top ten, it's absurd that wild bunch isn't there yet pat garret is. Good, bad, and ugly should be number one. Once upon a tie in the west should be in top ten. Rio Bravo should be in top ten. Treasure of sierra madre should be in top ten (AND IT WASNT EVEN ON THE LIST!!! DISGUSTING!!). Unforgiven should be in top ten. The great silence should be in top ten.

@el d I like a lot of titles you list. Yuma I love, though it has some weak themes, but the characters are great. Deadwood, would be great if it was a movie (as you say), and if they had finished it. Another shot from the 08 crash. Duck is super. I loved it when it came out (I had a kid's fascination with explosives), but saw it recently and it was better than I even remembered it.

Dajngo wouldn't make my list, and one thing I like about TO is they don't slavishly praise Tarantino, who has a lot of style but the movies are not so good really. T. has a very incisive review style, and someone who follows behind him in the same style will point out the way he hides behind genre.

I didn't mean to vet your list, but there are so many interesting titles.

Not a bad list. 50 is a lot though. I love westerns and they are quietly going through a bit of a rebirth right now. There's another good list here, of the 10 best modern westerns. There's still life in this "dead" genre yet.

How in the world could Richard Pryor have played the lead in Blazing Saddles? Don't get me wrong, he's crazy funny and I love him in other movies, but they were going for "dazzling urbanite" not twitchy, awkwardly funny crack-head. Side note: why is it crack when everyone else does it, but "freebase cocaine" when Pryor does it?

Once again I ask, why is it Jeremiah Johnson & The Culpepper Cattle Company are not up there in the top five....well, top two. Who makes this list....obviously people who have no idea the content of a seriously good western, told as it was!

@ray t You've made this same comment at least twice, and it's a bit silly. These may be good movies (haven't seen them yet), but no western is realistic, mainly because the real old west had a lot less gun fights and a lot more alcohol laced with turpentine, 12+ hour work days, and crotch rot riddled cowboys buggering each other. People rarely got shot, there really weren't good guys by today's standards, and carrying a gun in many if not most towns could get you arrested. Check out http://listverse.com/2013/02/18/9-crazy-truths-about-the-wild-west/ or just do a google search for "historic west myths" for a whole bunch more. If any movie ever told it as it was it would be boring, offensive, or both.

Although a TV series,(Dead Man's Walk, Comanche Moon, Lonesome Dove,
Streets of Laredo) Lonesome Dove is as good or better than most Western
Movies I have seen. I usually watch it about every 2 years and it never
gets old watching the characters grow from young to old, from green
first time rangers to harden trail cowboys, many passing along the way,
as in life. I highly recommend this series to watch if you can get it

Cannot believe, Jeremiah Johnson nor The Culpepper Cattle Company did not make it! Both should have easily made the top 5 in the top 10! The Culpepper Cattle Company was the most authentic western ever made!

You sound like a tenured, award-winning,
full professor of film studies.

You’re so brilliant that you don’t understand
the difference between “X,” and “depicting someone as ‘X.’”

But let’s stipulate, as they say
in the lawyer shows, that The Searchers is racist. So, what? That’s not a
criticism of it as a movie. That’s just your way of identifying yourself as a
racial socialist, i.e., a racist!

This is a list of the greatest Westerns
by guys who hate Westerns—moron fodder click-bait by PC types who fancy they’re
educated. Like you, the people who supported the list went to college to learn
to be stupid. They give themselves away, when they denounce Western-lovers as slaves
to some “canon.” Westerns aren’t about “canons,” they’re about cannons! Lovers
of Westerns understand that.

And I’m not going to say it’s
because you’re Englishmen. Some of my best friends are Englishmen. Heck, you
guys probably don’t appreciate British culture, either.

heavens gate was a disaster , meeks cut off was terrible 15 others on there that were average , seen them not worth seeing again , where is John Waynes El dorado , Maverick 1993 , James garner support your local sheriff , my name is nobody , Silverado , tomb stone , james stewart far country even Charles bronsons break heart pass was better then most on the list

Fantastic list! My taste and the author's are obviously very much aligned, as Pat Garret and Billy the Kid is the film that made me love westerns, as did McCabe and Mrs. MIller. And there is so much I haven't seen as yet, so I'm using this list to hunt down more westerns, and I've referred to this list many times now.

I agree with one of the other comments, your list is to stir controversy. To rate the Lonesome Dove series as 49th, well need I say more? If anyone actually reads this tripe, and wants to fee a part of a true western, you have to watch the whole series starting with Deadman’s Walk(when Cpt. Call and the boys are just teens ) then Commanche Moon(young adults) Lonesome Dove(as men) Return to Lonesome Dove and Streets of Laradeo. Yes, its made for TV, but so what. We share in there lives from young men to loss of life as time goes by, mirroring our own personal journey through life. Get the full series its worth watching.